


the gods toss a coin

by marinersapptcomplex



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Character Development, Character Study, Descent into Madness, Episode: s08e05 The Bells, F/M, Jon Snow is a Targaryen, Mental Breakdown, Paranoia, References to Depression, Stream of Consciousness, Time Skips, no editing we die like men
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-15
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2020-03-06 02:10:35
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,799
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18841495
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/marinersapptcomplex/pseuds/marinersapptcomplex
Summary: They say every time a Targaryen is born the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land.





	the gods toss a coin

**Author's Note:**

> i was just so gosh dang dissapointed by danys madness which came from like........ nowhere? like if ur going to do something do it right. SO i wrote a pov of her descent into madness - heavily inspired by wide sargasso sea bc its beautiful and perfect and sad. be warned, lots of time skips!!! like i've skipped out a lot of stuff!!! this also probably has a lot of mistakes so no flames

 

 

They say every time a Targaryen is born the gods toss a coin in the air and the world holds its breath to see how it will land. And so the world did.

 

When I couldn’t sleep at night, Viserys would let me climb into his bed and tell tales of all the horrible, beautiful things he’d seen. The way the throne room shone like it was made out of dragonglass at sundown, or the way that the sky looked like a swollen peach against the Westerosi waters.

 

He didn’t speak often of our past, he didn’t like to remember all that we had loved and lost. When I asked him why our family had suffered such great losses, he could only laugh. Shake his head and laugh, muttering, “No longer, no longer.”

 

He talked to himself in his sleep. Tossed and turned, whispering names of faces I would never truly know. I would try to rouse him, shake his shoulders, saying, “It’s only a dream, Viserys. It’s only a dream.”

 

“Did we inherit the sickness?” He said one night, dolorous and dreaming. “Are we still on fire? Did we ever put out the fire?”

 

I didn’t know. So I left him dreaming there, in his bed, with the moonlight heavy like chainmail against his body. I didn’t wake him once that night.

 

We grew used to a solitary life. We were forsaken, after all. Travelling from Braavos to Pentos with tears and stars in our eyes. There were others, before. Ser Willem Darry (who I could no longer remember) cared for us, once. We lived in a house with a red door, until the darkness took him away and he was gone for always.

 

Viserys didn’t talk about him either. His heart was black with poison, his mind - plagued with visions of blood and gold. People didn’t like to look at him like I did, people thought the sickness was inside him, growing, brewing. I didn’t like people, I didn’t like to believe them.

 

\--

 

He was my only friend. My only brother. My _only_. And yet he grew worse, twisting, turning, maddening. _The gods toss a coin…_ I thought, holding my breath.

 

“I want the throne, I will have it.” He said, tearful with rage. “For our father, for us.”

 

“But nobody wants us there. Nobody will _ever_ want us there.”

 

“We’ll make them. They have to.”

 

“I want us to stay here, forever, never go back.” I fell to my knees, I prayed. “I love you. Please. Let us stay here.”

 

I never let him see me cry. I never told him I loved him again.

 

It was too hot to sleep inside the house in the Pentos heat, so I slept outside, in the garden, on a bed of green moss so soft I felt as if I could sink into the earth, never to return. I lit fires just to watch them burn and smoulder in the moonlight. It was all I could do to distract myself from the illness that blossomed inside Viserys’ mind.

 

What else was there left to do but follow him? What else was there to do but love him?

 

I dreamt of Viserys that night, sick with anger, his skin burnt white and breaking. He was screaming in Valyrian, qilōni issi ao? skoros issi ao jurnegēre syt? _Who are you? What are you looking for?_

 

I awoke with the taste of ash in my mouth, fingernails dirty with earth. I lay my head down on the moss and pretended to be dead, just like Ser Willem, but I caught Viserys watching me from his window, lost in thought.

 

_Who are you? What are you looking for?_

 

_\--_

 

Before my wedding night, I pleaded: “Please, let me stay here. I beg of you.”

 

He did not listen. We rode days and nights to get to Essos. The sky was so swollen it could burst, break. It seemed to have no shape or colour, just a feeling in the air, a smell. If I could have reached up, taken a bite, swallowed it, perhaps it would’ve cured our sickness. Perhaps there would be no more coins left to toss.

 

“I’ll die out here. If I marry him I’ll die.”

 

“You’ll die if you don’t.”

 

So I married the Khal, and I became Khaleesi in a strange, foreign land, I loved him and in return he loved me. His love was different though, nothing I had ever encountered before. It was cosmic and beautiful. It was heavenly and deeply terrifying.

 

 _Moon of my life… Sun and my stars…_ When I was close and tight enough in his arms I wished to be held forever and ever - carried up into the darkness, so I could burn up next to every other little star. I was so desperately hungry. I was waiting for the sky to break.

 

Viserys only grew worse. His face, paler than I had ever seen, his eyes black. He wouldn’t talk to me anymore. When I tried to touch him, embrace him, he would scream. He was a corpse wandering the abandoned deserts of Essos. He wasn’t my brother, he was not who I grew up with.

 

“You cannot kill me, Dany. Please.”

 

As the gold pooled like butter in the melting pot, I watched him watch me with an absolute fear in his eyes. I watched him become my mother, my father, my brother. I watched my lineage burn into nothing but blood and gold and I could only smile.

 

 _I am the dragon_ , he said, weeping. _I am the dragon, I am the dragon…_

 

\--

 

I killed the Moon of my life. I was tricked by the witch with fire in her eyes. I killed what I thought couldn’t be killed.

 

I didn’t tell his people how, they didn’t ask, they didn’t want to know. I felt his breath leave his body, and I felt my heart blacken too. Something came out from my heart into my throat and then into my eyes. _Moon of my life… Sun and my stars…_

 

“I want to die.” My voice was not my own in the darkness, I was holding a dagger in my hand.

 

Jorah tore the dagger from me, and I collapsed to the ground wailing. My knees were wet with blood. I couldn’t feel it. I didn’t care. My blood was his, and his was mine.

 

“Khaleesi, please.” He tried to hold me in his arms. “This pain will pass.”

 

“No. Let me die.” I couldn’t look at him. “Please. Just let me die.”

 

He took me into his arms, kept me there as I wailed, calling for a soul that I knew would never return to me. Waiting for the stars to come and take me away.

 

“Why do such awful things happen, Jorah?” I said. “Why?”

 

“I don’t know, Khaleesi.” He said, softening. “I don’t know.”

 

\--

 

I slept with the dragon eggs in my bed and dreamt of fire and blood and snow. _If that were Hell, I wouldn’t mind living in it_ , I thought.

 

When I woke up there was ash in my hair and dragon wings beating against my skin. People were bent at their knees, praying. I couldn’t hear their words.

 

\--

 

In Mereen, I could not sleep. The air smelt too strongly of honey and dusk rose oil. I tried to remember Viserys’ face and the steely waves that washed in on Dragonstone, but I couldn’t. It only kept me awake in a feverish, melancholic daze.

 

Daario was more seashell, than man. He was intricate and flawed on the inside, filled with complexity and deep feeling - something he would never allow me to see, or understand. So I loved him, artificially, as much as I could.

 

I looked out at the city below our feet and tried to empathize. Chasms only opened inside of me, each one greater and more vast than the next. Unappeasable, unavoidable. With each day that passed, each place and face, each and every drop of blood spilt, my emptiness only spread, like a wound, festering.

 

“I don’t know what their faces look like anymore.” I said, staring out at the sky above. “I can’t remember.”

 

“Whose faces?” Daario eyes felt like wildfire against my skin, hot and burning.

 

“Nothing. You wouldn’t understand.”

 

“Well,” he kissed my neck and brushed his fingers through my hair. “I don’t need to understand to love you.”

 

 _If you understood, you couldn't love me._ I wanted to say, scream. _You couldn’t._

 

\--

 

The Lannister man seemed to appear like a dream in the months where Mereen began to fall, and when Jorah returned with him, I felt he was as much a stranger as Tyrion. Still, I relented.

 

Later, in bed, cast in darkness, with the curtains drawn and the candles snuffed out, I heard weeping, soft but strangely haunting. I wandered from my bed and into the light, where I found a looking glass. There in the light, I found tears on my face.

 

I stared back at the looking glass, harder. My face appeared as Viserys’ in the yellow candlelight. When he wept, so did I.  We gazed at one another for a long while, tears on both our faces. As I stood there staring, I wondered why I never realized how alike we looked.

 

\--

 

Drogon took me from the danger and into the sky, the stars. Then dropped me back down to the desert of men, to their petty problems and their illegitimate claims. They would never reach the sky, they would never feel a happiness as great as that. They would never know.

 

Each fire I started, burnt brighter and bigger with time. Each time I walked into the fire my purpose unfolded in front of me, more clear, more certain. I didn’t need to light fires any longer, for the fire  had been burning within me always.

 

\--

 

“What do you think it will be like? Westeros?” Missandei said, unsmiling.

 

We watched the tide, unbreaking from the forts of Dragonstone. I passed her over a cup and filled it slowly with wine, letting it spill over the sides, like blood, colourless on the stone beneath our feet.

 

“Like a dream, and a nightmare.” I said, listening for the next wave to break. “It will be nothing like I’ve imagined it to be, nothing like my brother described it. It will be something new.”

 

Missandei did not seem to disagree or query why, she only nodded her head, taking another sip of wine. Her face remained utterly solemn, and yet it still glowed, catching the occasional glimmer of light and reflecting it back onto my skin in the darkness. It was a warm feeling, a nice one.

 

“I wonder how long those people have waited for a ruler like you to ascend to the throne.”

 

“Far too long,” as hard as I tried I could not break my gaze away from the tide. “Far, far too long.”

 

The scent of the wine, the sea, was overpowering suddenly. I buried my nose into the back of my sleeve, breathed, tried to close my eyes. The emptiness of this place angered me, made me see dragon-fire and destruction where there wasn’t.

 

 _This is home. This is home._ That’s what I had to remind myself of.

 

“I’ve heard so many tales about all the awful things my father did,” I said, softer than intended. “The innocent people he killed and hurt, the pain and suffering he caused from that throne… Sometimes I wonder if power like that will weaken my mind too.”

 

“That would never happen, your grace.” Missandei frowned, her lips set straight. “How could you ever think that of yourself?”

 

“How could I not?” I said, not realizing the strength of my voice. “Sometimes I feel it spreading inside of me, that sickness, that anger and rage.”

 

Missandei turned to me, ready to object but I could not stop the words from my mouth now. I grabbed hold of her wrist with my hand, dropping the cup of wine. “It scares me, Missandei. I’m scared.”

 

What must she have thought, I pondered, what did she think of her wild-haired, red-eyed Targaryen queen now? I must’ve been mad. I _must’ve_.

 

But still, through all the sense I had inside my body I could not take my hand away from her wrist. It was as if she was an anchor weighing me to the ground.

 

“Do not be scared,” she said, placing her hand over mine. “I am here, Daenerys.”

 

Did the Targaryen family breed broken children? Did their hearts grow ill and weak? If it were possible to unbreak a person, could I be unbroken?

 

\--

 

The bastard washed up on Dragonstone like a pebble to a beach. He came to me, soundlessly, his eyes like shining daggers in the light. I did not want to hear him, I did not want to hear his stories of the Northern land, or his plea to mine for dragonglass.

 

He would not bend the knee, he would not call me queen so I didn't look him in the eye. I didn’t like what I saw inside his soul, I didn’t like the warmth and familiarity. It frightened me, how he looked like a bad dream in his furs and furrowed brows, yet I did not stay away.

 

 _The long night is coming,_ he’d say, over and over, until it haunted my mouth and my mind. _The long night is coming. They don’t feel fear, or remorse. They’ll kill us all…_

 

“Let them kill me, then. Let these monsters kill us dead if there are even such things.”

 

“You don’t believe me?” He said, brooding.

 

“How can I?” My voice was dry, careless. “I only have your word.”

 

“And that’s not good enough?”

 

I laughed a mad laugh. “I’ve been lied to all my life. Do you really think your word means anything to me?”

 

He seemed to laugh too, though I wasn’t sure why. There were parts of him that looked dead in the sterile light of day. Like his hands, blue and cold to the touch, or his face, so utterly devoid of feeling.

 

“I would never lie to you, Daenerys.”

 

I wanted to laugh again, but I couldn’t. He was a room, a shrine, a sanctuary. He was nothing more and nothing less than who I wanted him to be. My heart was black, and so was his. His heart was black like mine, but there was light inside there too. Like a blessing, a promise, an angelic curse.

 

 _Hold on to that light,_ I thought, _never let it go._

 

_\--_

 

We were fighting something so much larger than ourselves, running from evil, drowning in incomprehensible shadow. Jon kept on cutting them down and they kept getting up, hurling their bodies into the snow with the smell of burnt flesh in the air.

 

I saved them because I wanted to, because I wanted him. And he still wanted to sacrifice himself anyway, like the hero he was. My soldier, my soldier.

 

Viserion died underneath the ice, doomed to be butchered for eternity. Never to return, never to fly. Was I to grieve him like a son, a friend, a brother? I didn’t know, nobody did. Nothing prepared me for the death of a dragon, nothing prepared me for the sound of their cries.

 

Jon returned, bruised and beaten. I loved him desolately, the only way I knew how.

 

“I’m sorry, for everything.” He said, bed-bound and shaking. “I’m sorry you lost him.”

 

The northern sun was light on both our heads, and an overwhelming mixture of grief and longing filled my chest. “There’s nothing to be done now.” I replied, wiping tears so he couldn’t see. “We have to keep going, keep fighting.”

 

\--

 

He was the essence of love and loss, I realized, as he stood, blushing and drunk at the end of my bed. He helped me out of my dress, left it dusty and ragged in the corner of my room, and I thanked him.

 

Jon’s mouth washed into mine, blurring my vision like I was staring at the sun with my eyes open wide. Hands burning around bodies, unbuttoning shirts and pulling hair. Whispers of _I love you I love you I love you_ …

 

In the moments after, I tried to describe the way the throne room must look in King’s Landing, but he didn’t want to listen. He turned away, silently dreaming.

 

“Imagine… A place for me to love you, away from all this war.” I stared at the back of his head and pictured it cracking open like an egg, slowly unspooling, unraveling.

 

“You don’t have to take King’s Landing,” he turned to face me now, resting his head on my chest. “We could go away somewhere, never come back.”

 

“And why would we do that?”

 

“People are cruel, Dany. They want to kill what they don’t understand.” He closed his eyes sleepily.

 

“What does that mean?” Jon was asleep now, somewhere else. I wanted to pull at his hair, wake him up, make him give me a clear answer. _What does that mean?_

 

\--

 

I flew to Winterfell. I slept. I dreamt. I lost myself in the snow, the endless white-on-white, it’s all consuming purity. I waited for the worst to come, it didn’t. So I kept on waiting.

 

I became the stranger in the foreign land. I was dark and unhappy with anxiety. The nights would fall, yet no dead would come.

 

I tried to make allies, tried and failed. His sister didn’t answer to Targaryens, she never came to me, I always went to her, wringing my hands and forcing smiles.

 

“What happens to the North?”

 

She wasn’t afraid of anything, she looked and she didn’t stop looking. I heard people say she was more a queen than I was, she was more more more in every single way. I heard people say a lot of things, they didn’t stop talking in Winterfell.

 

“What happens to the North?” She asked again, stronger.

 

If she hated me, so be it. If this was Hell, then I was happy. No more false kingdoms. No more elegant lies, or damned prophets.

 

If They hated me, so be it. So be it.

 

\--

 

“It’s true. I know it is.” He said, his face dark and somber.

 

“If it were, that would make you the last male heir of House Targaryen.”

 

He didn’t look me once in the eyes. He didn’t say another word. I knew things would never go back to the way they were, I think he knew that too.

 

\--

 

The long night arrived. The dead rose again. I saw my people perish, and felt myself perish with them. Death was an endless inferno, taking and taking, never promising release.

 

I fell from Drogon’s back and I saw the stars by my side for a fleeting moment. Their expressionless faces: so bright and serene. _Moon of my life… Sun and my stars…_

 

I fell and I kept falling with the stars in my eyes, back into the snow, the dead. Their sunken faces, sharp teeth. _So be it, so be it,_ I reminded myself. _If this is Hell, I am ready._

 

Jorah took three daggers to the heart and only stopped when the dead came to their knees. If I had kept him away, banished him forever, he wouldn’t be losing his breath. He wouldn’t be dying in a strange land, with strange sharp-toothed creatures dead at his feet.

 

“Stay with me, please.” I pawed at his face, his heart, the parts of him I knew the most. “You don’t have to go, you don’t have to go.”

 

“I owe you,” his voice was tender and meek in the cold moonlight. “I owe you everything.”

 

Through heavy eyes, I stared up at the sky, finding no stars, no light. I wanted to put my head against his chest, listen to his heartbeat one last time, but I couldn’t. I could only crouch there, sobbing.

 

I wanted to ask him again, to know, “Why do such awful things happen, Jorah?”

 

But he did not reply.

 

\--

 

We lit the pyres aflame and went to bed still smelling their burnt hair. We said we would remember them, but how? How could I hold on to a memory that long? I could barely remember Viserys… _Mad boy, my poor, mad boy._

 

I sat with them and drank their Dornish wine and still they would not say a word to me. Were they scared, hateful? I wanted to die, I wanted them to die with me, to sleep forever, wake up when the sun returned to me and everyone was still alive.

 

“You can say nothing, to anyone ever, or it will take on a life of its own and you won't be able to control it or what it does to people.” I said angrily. No warmth, no sweetness. “No matter how many times you bend the knee. No matter what you swear.”

 

I knew what he was going to say before he said it, “I have to tell them.”

 

Nothing could extinguish my anger, my pain. And nothing could restore my faith. The world was not how I thought it was, how it used to be.

 

“Please,” I wept, prayed, begged. “Please, don’t do this.”

 

“I’m sorry.” He tried to reach out for my hand, but I could not touch him like I used to.

 

“It’s too late, it’s all too late.” I would not listen to him, his lies, his truths.

 

They only ever loved me for that which could destroy me: the daggers in my dreams, the blood on my hands, the sickness that bred in the folds of my mind.

 

\--

 

I had a dream, a vivid one. A violent one.

 

I didn’t remember much only that I was on my knees, wailing. There was glass in my hands, blood everywhere. And a shadow, who smelt like Jon, almost looked like him, but did not quite have his face.

 

I said _, will you love me even more when I am dead?_

 

No, he said. But I will miss you. I swear by it.

 

\--

 

_My love, my love, why have you forsaken me?_

 

\--

 

Time floated past me, like water running. Still, I pushed on. The armies sailed back and forth back and forth. The same faces greeting me, saying goodbye. Some I remembered, some I didn’t.

 

Euron Greyjoy killed Rhaegal and sent him screaming to the sea. _Not enough water in the ocean to clean the sins of men,_ I thought, watching his wings sink beneath the glittering waves.

 

I didn’t cry this time. Not even when Missandei was taken. Not even when I saw them doubt me time and time again. _Not my father’s daughter… Not my sister’s brother…_

 

This world was given up without me. I could not leave it alone, could not let _them_ die in vain.

 

“Treat them with mercy,” Tyrion told me, his face grave and worrisome. “Show them you gave Cersei every chance you could.”

 

We took our armies to the Keep, and stood there, asking for her surrender. Tyrion walked further, went further, looked upon his sister with distant admiration. If I could’ve broken him in two, broken house Lannister in two pieces, instead of one. _A Lannister always pays his debts…_

 

What debt could be paid for life? For Missandei’s? I didn’t look away when they took her head. I wanted to watch Cersei’s unsmiling face so I could remember it forever.

 

How Viserys would laugh at me. _I’m sorry,_ I’d say _. I’m sorry._ He couldn’t hear me now.

 

\--

 

They visited me one by one but they never asked anything of me. They tried to make me eat, I wouldn’t. A girl with apples for eyes and sugar for teeth came every half-hour just to try and force bread pudding into my mouth. When she shoved the spoon in my face, I screamed at her, screamed so loud, I felt the fire creeping up my throat.

 

_Look away from me. Look away, look away._

 

They wanted to break me, they wanted to break me in two. Viserys was right, he was right, my sweet, mad boy. We never put out the fire, it was still burning, burning bright. Who would put it out now?

 

Missandei’s head in a ditch somewhere in King’s Landing. Her pretty eyes, her pretty hair - rotting, rancid. How could they butcher something so beautiful, how did I not stop them? Names of poisons, names of swords, names of dead men and women in my mouth, and in my hair, my eyes, my fire. I could not get them out. _Get them out get them out get them out—_

 

All this time I have not cried. The women and men cry for me. Let them, let them. Let their tears put out the fire inside us. I wished he had not left me alone, to die, to love until I hated him. A wolf and a dragon, a wolf and a dying dragon, sick dragon, mad dragon.

 

Jon tried to make me eat, he fed me bread and milk, he pressed it to my mouth, and said, “You will starve if you don’t eat, then how will you take the throne?”

 

“But, don’t you see?” I wanted to throw myself into the waves, to scream, to kiss him good and pure. “They’ve taken the throne from me already.”

 

He didn’t understand, I couldn’t make him understand so I kissed him on the mouth and tried to show him all that we had loved and lost. He still didn’t understand, he didn’t want to, so I pulled him into my arms and didn’t let him go until he was shaking and breathing my name like a curse.

 

I held his face in my hands, I kissed him once more. The tears on his face became mine, and I whispered to him, trembling with glory. “You will always have a piece of me because you have held my life in your hands.”

 

He called for a maester, but I laughed in his face. I saw the love go out of his eyes, I saw it shatter like dragonglass. I loved him like I knew how, I loved him good and in return he loved me better than anyone else. No sun and stars, no moon of my life. Not anymore, not anymore. No longer, no longer.

 

“I loved you.” His voice was like the sound of many waters.

 

“What changed?”

 

“You.”

 

“No. Not me, _you_.” I saw an entire life inside his eyes, I saw mine too. “You should’ve stayed quiet, you should’ve told them nothing. We could’ve been happy. Why didn’t you want us to be happy?”

 

“I did.”

 

“No. You killed us.”

 

He was only a ghost now, and when he spoke, I heard my voice through his. “Don’t say that.”

 

All I knew was ice and fire. All I knew was love and death. What good would it do if they lived? To what end was creation? Was there nothing but this chaos, these piles of scraps and fragments? Nothing which bound them tightly together? This was a new hell; entirely of snow; a never-ending labyrinth. 

 

\--

 

They told me to knock their walls down, so I did. They told me to show mercy time and time again. And I did. They told me to wait for the bells to ring ( _t_ _hey will ring, they will ring)_ but I didn’t.

 

Day lifted off like a fog when the fire spilled over. The people flickered out of the streets like panicked beetles. A dying star burnt in a gap between the tall buildings _—_ solitary, existing alone _—_ a promise of a world which here was but a legend.

 

Westeros was not a dream, or a nightmare. It was something else, something new. I understood Viserys and I became him. I saw the world through his eyes and he saw the world through mine.

 

 _Burn it all,_ he said _. Burn it all._

 

So it all burned and kept on burning, and I did not let the burning stop until I felt it in my heart. Until it burnt a hole right through my chest and allowed the light to pour through it freely. Everything passed everything perished, nothing survived.

 

Jon, from the ground looked like Rhaegar. He stared up at me with tears in his eyes and whispered something I did not stop to hear. I loved him, but not enough. Not enough to set myself free. _You’re all I have… You’re all I wanted to have…_

 

As the Red Keep fell I stared back at him, pondering. _Will you love me even more when I am dead?_

 

There was fire in the sky, so raw, so swollen and vengeful. All my life was in that sky, burning.

**Author's Note:**

> hire me david benihoff!! i can fix season 8 for you xoxoxo


End file.
